Hassel Aviles, founder of Toronto's Underground Market at the Brick Works on Bayview St.Fernando Morales/The Globe and Mail
Hassel Aviles steps inside a red-brick kiln and peers inside. She tries to push a crumbling bit of its masonry back into place.
Not that Ms. Aviles would prefer pristine walls over the rusted air ducts and acid-orange graffiti inside Evergreen Brick Works' dramatic brick kiln room, with its soaring ceilings and 11,000 square feet of unfinished industrial space – for her, it's the perfect place for fine dining. And soon it will be home to the city's newest food experiment she's been planning since the spring, the Toronto Underground Market. Savoury smells will fill the gigantic room – those of grilled sausage with mustard seed, maybe, or pork tacos – along with 30 to 40 vendors and one long, communal dinner table set between two kilns.
The evening of Saturday, Sept. 24 will see the debut of the Toronto version of the San Francisco Underground Market, the massively popular, not-quite-legal gathering of amateur chefs begun by wild-food co-operative ForageSF and its founder, Iso Rabins. Run out of private homes and warehouses, it was a covert food happening where home cooks and local foragers could offer their wares even if they couldn't afford licenses or commercial kitchens. It was the talk of food lovers everywhere – until it was unceremoniously shut down by authorities last month.
Unlike its American inspiration, Toronto's "underground" market will be above board – despite the graffiti.
"It's really important for me to ensure that this is a legal event," says Ms. Aviles.
The idea of the market, of course, is to allow aspiring chefs to sell their creations without the barrier of having to rent a costly commercial kitchen – a must for anyone who sells food to the public, such as at a farmers' market. Ms. Aviles also hopes it will be a forum for street food that reflects the city's multicultural makeup.
If the mobs that greeted the Distillery District's Food Truck Festival on July 2 are any sign, it's an idea whose time has come. Ms. Aviles launched a social-media campaign for the market in late April and was overwhelmed by a "whirlwind response" from media and the public.
Hundreds of potential vendors asked to sign up, although she hadn't yet found a venue and wasn't sure how to keep the market legal.
"I wanted to create an opportunity for entrepreneurs without the funds to showcase their food," says Ms. Aviles. "These people are not amateurs – they've been cooking for years."
They are food devotees like 36-year-old Kurt Krumme. The technical director at a design firm, he's also the co-founder – with Ryan Donovan, the butcher at restaurant Marben – of West Side Beef, which buys sides of aged, pastured cow directly from the farmer, butchers them into equal portions and sells $150 boxes of various cuts to consumers. Once a side project, the beef has taken over.
"As a business, it's not quite there; as a hobby, it's pretty much out of control," he says.
Their menu at the Toronto Underground Market would be "representational of the whole animal." There might be burgers or sausages or a pulled-beef-brisket sandwich.
"I would say [the underground market]is almost more like a European market, where you'll be walking in Bologna and there's a guy selling cured sausage, but he's also got little charcuterie plates laid out," says Mr. Krumme. "You can try it and be like, 'Oh, this is amazing.'
"There's no other venue where we could do that. We would have to open up a restaurant, which is $300,000 just off the starting block."
In just a few months, Ms. Aviles, 30, has gone from being a food-loving Guelph mother of two with dreams of some day running a restaurant to being the linchpin of a new gourmet-street-food movement in Toronto.
At the September event, vendors will pay $150 each for a booth, where they'll sell small plates for around $2 to $8 apiece. Attendees will pay a $5 entry fee if they pre-register online at yumtum.ca, or $10 at the door. The Brickworks location has a capacity of about 1,200 to 1,500 people if they're standing, less if they're sitting (though Ms. Aviles doesn't anticipate using more than about one-third or one-half of the room).
A special-events liquor license will let foodsters have a spot of local beer or wine to wash down their goat cheese.
Vendors will first have to pass a tryout stage, a "sample day" where they'll display their wares for the co-organizers, who will pick the standouts. Those that qualify will receive some education on food handling and safety, says Ms. Aviles.
There will be strict rules. Almost all the food preparation will take place in Evergreen's commercial, fully inspected events kitchen – a key condition of keeping the market within municipal and provincial public-health regulations. Vendors with access to an offsite commercial kitchen may use it, but most won't have that luxury. Either Ms. Aviles or another organizer with a city food handler's certificate must be present in the Evergreen kitchen while every dish is being prepared. All ingredients must come from approved distributors, says Suzanne Lychowyd, healthy environments manager at Toronto Public Health.
"We will probably have inspectors on site when they start initially, for the first few times," she says. "There hasn't been anybody that has done [a market]in this fashion."
Guy Rawlings, the 30-year-old former head chef of Brockton General, hopes to be a vendor. He isn't worried about the logistics about cooking in shifts alongside 30-odd others.
"You don't even have to use heat to prepare food," he points out.
There will be chefs who won't make the underground market cut. Nothing prepared off-site, unless in a commercial kitchen, will be allowed. That means nothing cured, pickled, smoked or brined. (Ms. Aviles hopes to eventually plan an early prep session for such treatments in later markets, to be held monthly.)
"I had a woman who [wanted to sell]pancetta cured in her basement," she shrugs. "We can't do it."
The best part for the wannabe chefs? They'll get to keep 100 per cent of their earnings after they pay their vendor fee.
Ms. Aviles is using her savings and some funds from her parents to pay for it all: the space, the kitchen – even complimentary shuttle buses to out-of-the-way Evergreen from Broadview station for attendees. Five per cent of her profits will go back to Evergreen.
What if her market becomes a cheap business incubator – a launching pad for successful restaurants that could one day surpass the market itself? Ms. Aviles smiles.
"Then my dream has come true," she says. "That's exactly what I hope it will be. That's what San Francisco was. There's a lot of up-and-coming talent that will come out of this."
Special to The Globe and Mail